January 17, 1988: The Fumble

DENVER - If you freeze the play at just the right time, you can imagine it as the most exciting moment in franchise history. There was Earnest Byner, ball in his right hand, big hole in front of him, about to tie the AFC Championship game at 38.

This was the Browns' destiny. Last year, it was Cleveland with the 7-point lead late in the fourth quarter, playing at home, then watching John Elway drive down the field to tie the game. That became forever known as "The Drive," and Cleveland fans were still bitter about it.

Now, the tables were turned. It was the Broncos who had the 7-point lead late in the fourth quarter, playing at home. It was the Browns who drove down the field, putting themselves in position to tie the game. Then they called that handoff to Byner, who got the ball cleanly and started running off-tackle left. It looked like he would walk in ...

In the immediate years preceding the Super Bowl, the Browns were an NFL dynasty. They won four straight AAFL championships, then won four titles in 14 years after joining the NFL. The Browns last NFL title was in 1964, the year before the Super Bowl was instituted. Bad luck there. Twice more in the 1960s, they lost with the Super Bowl just a game away. Then ... nothing. No playoff wins for 16 years as they tried to return to the top. They finally broke through in 1986, before Elway and The Drive knocked them away. This year, it would finally happen.

Byner looked like he was coming in clean, but Broncos defensive back Jeremiah Castille had a shot at him. Castille reached in and hit the ball, jarring it loose, the fell on the ball at the 2-yard line. The Browns were devastated. Their fans went catatonic. Two yards from the goal line, and the ball was lost. Their best chance at a Super Bowl, and they came up 2 yards short.

The Broncos gave the Browns an intentional safety, cutting their lead to 38-33, but there wasn't enough time left for the Browns to mount a touchdown drive. They would be sitting out the Super Bowl again. Two years later, they lost to the Broncos in the AFC championship a third time. They've never been as close to the Super Bowl since.

The next year, when the Browns released their team media guide, people took notice of the cover. At first, it didn't seem odd - it was just a stylized version of a photograph of quarterback Bernie Kosar handing off to Byner. But at closer look, people came to a stunning realization: the picture was taken moments before The Fumble. The Browns had chosen the moment immediately before the most painful turnover in team history to highlight their upcoming season.

In a way, it made sense - a reminder of how close they came to their goals, a way to inspire the team to do just a little bit more. In retrospect, it's haunting, a picture captured at the absolute peak of the franchise, the moment the Browns started to sink.

---

HONORABLE MENTION -
January 17, 1999: MINNEAPOLIS - I don't know why everybody blames Gary Anderson. I suppose it makes sense for fans of poetic irony - the kicker that hadn't missed all season missing the kick that would have clinched a berth in the Super Bowl. But he just became a convenient scapegoat. After all, when that kick sailed wide left, the Vikings still had a 7-point lead, just over a minute to play. The Falcons shouldn't have had time to drive for a tying touchdown. And they wouldn't have had time if Robert Smith, remembering his knee injury from a couple years before, hadn't run out of bounds untouched three times on that final drive. Stay in bounds once, Robert, and the Falcons certainly don't have time to tie the game. And everybody always forgets that a) the Vikings had 30 seconds left to try to break the tie at the end of regulation and took a knee and b) they got the ball first in overtime but couldn't score. It's just ... it's just ... I don't want to talk about it any more. It's stupid....

December 3, 1950: No passing fad

CLEVELAND - The Philadelphia Eagles weren't convinced. Neither were many of the other teams in the NFL, actually, but the Eagles especially weren't sold on the talent of the Cleveland Browns. The Browns had joined the NFL from the AAFL at the beginning of the 1950 season, and in their first game had laid a 35-10 thrashing on the defending champion Eagles. Still, though, the Eagles weren't convinced. "You can't win in the NFL by just throwing the ball," they said. "Cleveland only does it because they're not tough enough to run it in our league."

OK, thought Cleveland. We'll see about that.

And so Cleveland bided their time, piling up more and more wins - losing only two games, both to the Giants - before pulling into their December 3 rematch against Philadelphia in a first-place tie. They remembered what everybody had said, that they weren't tough enough to run. They remembered that everybody had discounted their win over the Eagles as a fluke. They remembered.

So they invited the Eagles into Cleveland Stadium, on a cold December day on Lake Erie, and the Browns ran the ball. And they ran and ran some more, running the ball right down the Eagles' throats. Sure, it was the smart thing to do - the weather was getting worse, the field was getting sloppy. It made sense to shift to a run-first offense. In fact, the Browns had been running a lot more than they'd been passing for the last three games. But this time, it was different. This time, they were trying to prove a point.

The results of their game plan were mixed. The Browns only ran for 69 yards in the game, but they still won 13-7, behind two field goals and an interception returned for a touchdown. It wasn't pretty, but they had won a game without attempting a single pass.

In the process, they proved a couple points. The first was that they were good enough to win in the NFL by running the ball. In this, they had proven their detractors wrong. The second point was one they may not have been trying to prove, but it was one that inadvertently showed that their game plan in the first meeting against Philadelphia wasn't that wacky. The Browns had shown that it was foolish for any NFL team at that point to ignore the pass. The time of NFL teams being able to plunge into the line over and over was through. It simply couldn't be done any more. Teams had to pass now, even if it was just a few passes a game.

The Browns 13-7 win over Philadelphia on December 2, 1950, remains the last NFL game in which a team did not attempt a single forward pass. The next week, their point proven, the Browns passed for 321 yards against Washington to wrap up a tie for the American Conference championship. They won the NFL title two weeks later.

November 24, 1957: Brown of the Browns

CLEVELAND - Jim Brown is often called the greatest college lacrosse player of all time. With his rare combination of speed and power, he was a force on the lacrosse field for Syracuse. He also starred as a basketball player and lettered on the track team.

Fortunately for the Cleveland Browns, Jim Brown was even better at football. After suffering the first losing season in franchise history in 1956, the Browns added the great Syracuse running back to their roster and instantly returned to be among the NFL's elite teams.

With Brown in the fold and wreaking havoc from the backfield, the Browns climbed to the top of the NFL's Eastern Division. Brown was sensational from the start, rushing for 947 yards to lead the NFL as a rookie. His best game as a rookie came on November 24 against the Rams, when he rushed for an NFL single-game record 237 yards.

Brown's single-game record has been eclipsed several times since then, but his impact on the game has never been equalled. Despite retiring after only nine seasons at the age of 29, Brown was the NFL's all-time leading rusher by far when he retired. He was the first player to score 100 touchdowns and is the only player in NFL history to average more than 100 yards rushing per game over an entire career.

---

HONORABLE MENTION
November 24, 1963: NEW YORK - The nation was reeling. John F. Kennedy had been killed just two days before, and everybody was still in shock. That day, Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered live on TV, adding to the shock and turmoil. The NBA, NHL, and AFL all cancelled their games for the next few days, but the NFL played on, playing a full schedule. Though attendance wasn't noticeably affected, none of the games were shown on TV as the networks were still dedicated to the aftermath of the assassanation. Commissioner Pete Rozelle defended the decision, saying that football was "The President's game." He later called his decision to play a full schedule the worst decision of his tenure.

September 21, 1970: Monday Night

CLEVELAND - It was a novel concept, something that had never been tried and that seemd quite risky. But those kinds of ideas were right up Roone Arledge's alley. The head of ABC sports had come up with many groundbreaking sports ideas, including coming up with ABC's Wide World of Sports and modernizing the coverage of college football, but his latest idea was his boldest yet: a weekly NFL game shown nationwide on Monday Night.

NFL Commissioner Pete Roselle signed off on the idea, and Monday Night Football was born. The premiere broadcast was on September 21, 1970, when Cleveland beat the New York Jets 31-21.

An instant hit was born. Monday Night Football shot almost immediately to the top of the TV ratings for Monday nights, rarely losing the top spot throughout the 1970s. That domination soon spread, when the broadcasts would often be the most-watched television program of the entire week.

Monday Night Football lasted on ABC until the 2005 season, surviving problems such as tape-delayed broadcasts on the west coast to substandard matchups late in the season because of the static schedule. Some of the most iconic moments in NFL history became famous in large part to their happening on Monday night. The growth of Monday Night Football had a lot to do with the growth of the NFL's popularity.

ABC doesn't televise Monday Night Football anymore, with ESPN now taking over the broadcast. Because of that, NBC's Sunday Night broadcast is now considered the Game of the Week in the NFL. But the NFL, and all the networks that televise it, owe much of their success to the popularity of Monday Night Football.

---

HONORABLE MENTION
September 21, 1955: BRONX, N.Y. - Archie Moore knocked down Rocky Marciano in the second round of their heavyweight championship fight that night in the Bronx. That was news enough, as it was only the second time the great Marciano had been knocked down in his career. One of the greatest fighters of all time, Marciano was defending his heavyweight title for the sixth time, and he showed the form that had made him unbeatable. He got up from his rare knockdown and pummeled Moore, knocking him out in the ninth round to retain the title. It was his last career fight. Retiring the next year with a record of 49-0, Marciano remains the only man to retire as the undefeated heavyweight champion.

September 16, 1950: A win for the little brother

PHILADELPHIA - The Cleveland Browns had waited five years for this opportunity.

When the All-American Football Conference formed in 1946, the Browns quickly established themselves as the dominant team in the league. They won the league championship each of the first four years, running up an incredible 47-4-3 record in the process. Every year after winning the championship, they challenged the NFL champion to a game to determine the best team in the country. Each year, the NFL refused.

The NFL had reasons to refuse the game. As the established league, they didn't want to give any unnecessary credibility to the AAFC and risk threatening their status as the premier league in the country. Also, there were many questions about the legitimacy of the AAFC, based on how easily the Browns won the championship every year.

Finally, after four years, a peace was reached. Though the AAFC drew more fans on average than the NFL, most of their teams were losing money. The NFL agreed to absorb three teams from the AAFC for the 1950 season, taking the Browns along with San Francisco and Baltimore. When the merger was announced, the Browns had hoped it would lead to a championship matchup against the NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles, but the NFL still didn't allow it.

They did, however, throw the Browns a bone by scheduling the two defending champions to play in the opening game of the 1950 season in Philadelphia. The NFL did so with the intention of proving once and for all that their league had been the superior one. The Eagles certainly believed the hype, as they didn't even bother scouting the Browns' preseason games.

Though it was an opening-week regular season game, the game was treated like a playoff game. It was moved from the Eagles' normal home of Shibe Park to Municipal Stadium to take advantage of the increased seating capacity; in all, 71,000 people attended, more than in any previous NFL or AAFL championship game and even more than attended the first Super Bowl 15 years later.

Inspired by finally getting their chance against the NFL champions, the Browns took full advantage, dominating from the beginning. They shut down the Eagles offensively and, perhaps more importantly, found holes in the vaunted Eagles Defense, one that had been much-feared and widely imitated in the NFL for years. A 14-3 halftime lead was extended to a 35-10 Cleveland victory, silencing at least for a week the critics who doubted the talent of the supposedly inferior league.

Cleveland didn't stop there. The Browns finished the season 10-2, earning a place in the league championship game, where they beat the powerful Los Angeles Rams 30-28 for their fifth straight league title. The Browns had proven that they were the best football team in America, and they stayed near the top for a decade, winning seven titles in a 10-year span.